Substantive short articles on Marxian sociology
In developing a summary of my recent book – Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions 1492 – 1790 – I focused on the interplay between capitalism, genocide, and racism. I was struck by how each of four distinct epochs over the past 500 years of [...]
For decades now, political regimes have been veering toward extreme nationalism and neofascism. A horde of authoritarian regimes, from Russia to Hungary, Poland to India, Brazil to Egypt, the Philippines to Turkey, to cite some of the most egregious examples, have increasingly achieved victory across the world, particularly in [...]
Paul Gomberg’s piece published on April 15, 2025, titled Why Activists Need Critical Communism appeared in my inbox this morning. He rightly alludes to many things the left, at its most noble phase of self-knowledge, ought to find reasonable — and ideally, second nature: the tradition of self-criticism, the [...]
Last spring, encampments filled campuses, protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and university complicity. Now people are in the streets protesting the elimination of jobs and opposing deportations. Others have been fighting climate change. The summer of 2020 saw millions in the streets of the U.S. and many other [...]
April 7, 2025 is “World Health Day.” According to the World Health Organization, its aims to promote “healthy beginnings” and “hopeful futures” for people worldwide. Juxtapose those aspirations to a quote from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, just one week earlier, which read: “They [...]
The election results around the country were interesting for the left for two reasons: poor working-class people are increasingly becoming dealigned from the Democratic Party, and this shift is happening in ‘blue’ states as well as in ‘red’ states. For example, San Francisco is normally [...]
Beyond wages and working conditions, workers should have a meaningful say in broader organizational decisions, recognizing them as active economic citizens rather than passive employees. If democracy is to extend beyond the political realm, it must reach the workplaces where people spend much of their lives
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal, state and local governments rolled out relief programs from 2020 through 2022 to offset the precarity that many suffered due to lost work, sickness, and insecurity in the United States... why did so many of the renters with the greatest need, who were the intended beneficiaries of ERAPs, struggle to participate?
On the eve of New Year’s Day 1900, Frank P. Walsh (1864-1939) reflected on his life and decided a major change was in order. At thirty-five years old he had an expanding family and thriving career in corporate law. After growing up in extreme poverty in an Irish-American section [...]
A few weeks after the epochal fall of the Assad dictatorship, Syria remains in flux. It could not be otherwise after 53 years of the strangulation of civil and political life under one of the world’s most murderous regimes. Nonetheless, some broad outlines of where Syria is going can [...]
